Affiliate Marketing

Today’s Guest Blogger is Jason Fladlien, creator of numerous products, such as : Double Your Productivity For Life 7 Minute Articles & $40 An Hour Ghostwriting System

Here’s where a lot of people struggle. In order to get good, continual traffic, you need good content.

But just creating good content on its own usually doesn’t bring you any traffic. So what do you do? That’s the rub. That’s why a lot of people have trouble making money online. They face this traffic/content conundrum.

Option 1..
The first thing you can do (and almost everyone DOES) is to try to bypass the good content creation phase… And go straight for the traffic. A push button software program perhaps could do the trick? You plop down some cash on one of these gizmos… And you might even try in earnest to make it work.

It usually doesn’t. That’s because what value are you providing to the marketplace? Usually none. You can spin an article 7 ways till Sunday – but if that article sucks, you’ve added not just one piece of junk to the Internet landfill… But a whole heap of it.

Nice try.

Option 2…
Go the affiliate route. Makes sense – you can tap into someone else’s high value content… And still just focus on traffic to get eyeballs to that person’s high value content.

For your reward you earn commissions on sales. Sounds swell. Maybe you can use some of the content they give you. Problem – every other affiliate is using that same content. Again, no value is being created in the marketplace. Just more noise. And if you’re going to use your own content… Then you need to be good at creating content anyway. Sigh.

Option 3…
Go long tail young man (or woman)! You can create some content… Based around keywords like “Weber Q 100 Portable Propane Gas Grill” and play the SEO game. Boy that sounds like a picnic, doesn’t it? It can be made to work – but what value are you really putting out there for the marketplace?

Option 4…
Become a “high value content creator”. This is hard. Laborious. Little payoff in the short run. Requires a lot of your time – especially at first. Something with few short cuts attached to it. The toughest road to travel. That’s why it’s the best. That’s why it’s the model that will work most often. But it’s also the least attractive. Plus it requires the delicate balancing act of practicing and fine tuning your skills to create content… And also getting SOME short term payoff.

Where’s The Money?
If you’re with me so far, you’ve reached the conclusion that the most predictable… Most scalable… Most long term valuable thing to do to build online wealth… Is creating high value content. The trick is getting paid to practice.

When coaching clients come to me and are just starting their online business… They ask me if they should create a blog. Often I say no. While a blog is a great place to practice creating high value content… It requires you to BRING people to your blog. That’s challenging.

On the flip side, what about an active forum? There are people already going there… You just need to get the attention of a few of them. So you create high quality content for an active forum. The main purpose is to get good at creating high value content – while getting some short term results.

Warning – You Won’t Get Rich!
Sadly you won’t make a lot of money doing this. But you can make some in the short term… And get paid to “practice”. And you stand an okay chance of making SOME money at first.

Let’s get specific. The first thing you do is observe. You have to spend a few days going to the active forum you’re targeting… And just take in the “culture”. Each forum has its own unique identity. There are things the forum as a whole is favorable to… And things it hates. Be aware so you can do the things it likes and NOT do the things it hates.

More importantly observe this forum with your “opportunity antennae” on. You’re looking specifically for this – a problem shared by a large number of visitors to the forum who are desperate for a solution to that problem. Once you’ve figured out this problem – it’s time to get your hands dirty and do some work.

I’m talking serious research. Serious effort to create the granddaddy forum post that will become the de facto “go here” thread in the future any time someone brings up the problem.

You might have to spend 2 hours researching the solution for the post you’ll create… And another hour crafting it. It will be worth it. People will love your for it. You might even get some cash out of it.

Example…
A huge problem people have in Internet marketing is setting up an affiliate program. I know. In fact I’m creating software for it that I’ll launch in 2011 because this is such a big problem. However, in the meantime you could – hypothetically – provide your own solution on a high traffic Internet marketing forum like the Warrior Forum (http://warriorforum.com).

What do you do? Here’s what I’d do if I was in your position.

I’d start with the outline. I’d aim to cover the 3 major, most popular affiliate program solutions. And I’d also try to cover 3 “obscure, little talked about” solutions. I’d have to dig around for these and hopefully test them out if they’re free or rather inexpensive.

Then I’d write that granddaddy forum post. For each of the 3 main ones, I’d write a step by step tutorial on how to set up an affiliate program with that program, including screenshots. I’d also research my butt off to uncover all the pros and cons I could think of related to each of those.

I’d do the same thing with the 3 obscure ones. Would I throw an affiliate links in at any point? No. Not only would it probably violate the rules of that particular forum… But even if it didn’t I’d still not get greedy.

Remember the focus is on GIVING… Creating high value content… The end all, be all solution for this problem. People will reject it if they think you are trying to be sly and take advantage of them. Don’t be foolish.

So How Will You Monetize It?
One of two ways. Either with a low key “forum signature” or with people literally seeking you out and private messaging you for further help, which often they would be happy to pay for. (That’s when you know you did it right!) A low key forum signature could be something like – “I help set up affiliate programs for people. Email me at email@example.com if you’d like to discuss hiring me.”

Simple, right? Yes.
What can this mean for you? Well I’m looking at a thread right now on the Warrior Forum that has 21,260 views. Guess what it’s about? How to get the most out of an ezine article! Not rocket science. It’s not even that good content.

This post is 2 years and 2 months old. So don’t expect to get 21,000+ views immediately. But do the math – that averages out to about 26 views a DAY over the span of two years and two months.

Sounds good to me.
Now what if you created a post like this once a week? In a year you’d have a lot of things going for you…

• Tons of high value content out there.
• Stuff to repurpose into free (and paid!) products.
• Experience which sharpens your skills.
• Enlightenment based on results. (Can’t get that in an ebook.)
• Some money in your pocket.

Hopefully along the way you aim at getting a little (just a little!) better with each piece of high value content you create. If you do this – in a year you will laugh when you look at a blank screen – because it will be so easy for you to create high value content… Since you’ve done it so often.

Plus, you’ll be more finely tuned in to how people react to certain things that you do… Meaning you are consciously able to create FAVORABLE reactions consistently.

You will be a high value creation machine. Which you can leverage so many different ways to get traffic. Which in turn you can then pick among the many proven models to make money online. It’s not glamorous. It’s a little slow. But it works. Don’t you wish you would’ve spent the last year with a plan like this instead of being distracted by fancy, pie in the sky solutions?

Jason

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